The Covid continues to spread in the Tour de France peloton. Guillaume Martin will not be at the start of the 9th stage of the Tour de France, this Sunday between Aigle in Switzerland and Châtel. The Frenchman from the Cofidis team indeed tested positive for Covid-19 on Saturday evening. The climber is thus the third participant in this 2022 edition of the Tour de France to be forced to withdraw because of the Covid after his compatriot Geoffrey Bouchard of the AG2R-Citroën team and the Norwegian Vegard Stake Laengen, a Tadej yellow jersey teammate. Pogacar.
Guillaume Martin had been complaining of his throat for two days. He quickly had confirmation of the origin of his ailments. “After a double positive test carried out this Saturday internally by the team doctor on Guillaume Martin, the Cofidis staff contacted the UCI (the international federation) and ASO (the organizer), indicated the UCI in a press release this Sunday. A PCR test carried out urgently this Sunday morning by the ASO mobile unit confirmed its positivity. In accordance with the regulations and in agreement with the UCI and ASO doctors, Guillaume Martin will not take the start of the 9th stage. »
“I was going to have fun, the situation decided otherwise”
The UCI then specifies that “the other Cofidis riders and all the staff were also tested and their results were all negative. The team will carry out a new compulsory test at the end of the rest day, in accordance with the protocol put in place by ASO”. The results of these tests carried out on the whole peloton are obviously awaited by all with concern.
“I had good feelings on arrival in Lausanne and an hour later I learned that I was probably going to have to abandon the Tour, declared, masked and touched, Guillaume Martin to France Televisions Sunday noon. It’s frustrating in that I don’t have any symptoms, I feel fine. I even felt that I was mounting physical pressure and that there were great things to do on the rest of this Tour, on stages that suited me better. Everything was going well until then, I had avoided falls on this first week of Tour. So I finally arrived on a ground where I knew I was going to have fun. The current situation has decided otherwise. »
As he leaves the Tour obviously disappointed, Guillaume Martin hopes to have tackled the problem early enough, thus avoiding having contaminated the rest of the team. For the record, Cofidis has already been affected by the Covid on this Tour since, the day before the start in Copenhagen, Bryan Coquard had already had to give up after a positive test.
“It can ruin the Tour”
After two editions disrupted by the pandemic, the specter of the Covid has returned to haunt the peloton since Saturday morning. And that could weigh on the smooth running of the rest of the Grande Boucle, as was the case during the Tour de Suisse in June, when more than forty riders including the leader of the general classification had been disqualified.
“It can ruin the Tour”, warned yellow jersey Tadej Pogacar on Saturday in Lausanne after the 8th stage. For his part, David Lappartient, the French president of the UCI whose headquarters is in… Aigle, says he trusts the teams. He does not believe in a hecatomb of cases in the coming hours and assures that the UCI is not considering a new protocol.